


answers in every line

by nosecoffee



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Eliza is a witch, F/M, Fluff, I like pain and crying, Laurens is a bitch, Light Smut, Like, M/M, Magic AU, Magic is illegal AU, Memory wiping is a punishment for being in possesion of something magical, Modern AU, barely there smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8102023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: Alex doesn’t know what he’s doing here.A slip of paper from the inside of John’s pocket. An address to a narrow-doored den.And there are books everywhere.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [consumptive_sphinx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the occupational hazards of magic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6946921) by [consumptive_sphinx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx). 



Alex doesn’t know what he’s doing here.

A slip of paper from the inside of John’s pocket. An address to a narrow-doored den.

And there are books everywhere. Books about biology and physics and botany and magic. Alex doesn’t know if he’s scared or fascinated or both.

He loves it there, and he knows that it’s glamoured, and he knows it’s illegal and there is one rule that he mustn’t break.

The one thing he wants to do, he is forbidden to.

If he speaks, he pulls the rug out from under all of them.

If he speaks, they’ll be found and the place will close and the silent, purple-eyed owner of the shop will be arrested and killed and all sorts of things Alex would never wish upon anyone.

So he stays silent and buys a book about the stars and walks home with a slip of paper in his pocket that he needs to put back before John notices it’s gone.

~

He knows the rules and he isn’t scared but he’ll be damned before he leaves the room without saying a word.

But he notices. The purple-eyed shopkeeper sees Alex opening his mouth to say something. His cool and calculated eyes wander over his face and he looks almost fond.

He shakes his head and Alex closes his mouth, hugging his new book (one about Faerie Tales this time) to his chest.

Alex swallows and turns.

A soft, warm hand touches his arm lightly, like butterfly, hesitant and scared.

Alex turns and the shopkeeper is holding out a small, dusty, leather-bound book, lips pursed as if he is unsure whether he should really give it to Alex.

But he takes it - wordlessly, because maybe he dreams of fire and books and scared purple eyes - and nods his thanks, leaving the narrow-doored den, silent, once again.

~

And so maybe he's damned.

~

He returns again and again, and the shopkeepers hesitant stares turn soft and warm.

He meets a girl there - black hair and small eyes, clutching a book on iron and steel - who follows him out of the shop and introduces herself.

(Eliza Schuyler, 23 years-old, witch.)

His piles of books continue to grow - volumes about tea leaves and crystal balls, spines cracked, blood rituals and animal sacrifices, parchment pages, love potions and herbs for bad days.

John sees him come home late from a visit to the shop, but doesn’t say a word about the red book clutched in one of Alex’s hands. It’s about magical creatures.

It’s like he’s back in the shop. It’s like he can’t speak even outside of it.

Like the purple-eyed shopkeeper binds his tongue wherever he goes.

It doesn’t matter.

John knows more than him. And maybe better than him. And maybe he knows something Alex doesn’t.

~

He hasn’t opened the small, dusty book, afraid of what he’ll find. It’s like it’s cursed.

Or perhaps it’s a siren, calling him to drown, but repelling him all the same.

Alex is afraid of what could happen if he turns the yellowed parchment and reads the books secrets.

~

Eliza tells him over coffee about her potions. Tells him about the time she’d turned her sister into a black cat and she and her other sister had pored over books for a week before they could work out how to change her back.

Eliza tells him a lot of things.

Eliza knows a lot of things.

But she doesn’t know the shopkeeper’s name.

~

Alex puts the spell book on the counter and looks up at the shopkeeper.

He smiles at Alex and rings it up. Alex passes him the money.

The shopkeeper notices the slip of paper. He looks up, gaze steady.

He nods and Alex grins as he picks up his new book and holds out his hand.

~

His name is Aaron.

He has a soft, melodious voice, and his laugh sounds like bells.

He seems to be shrouded in magic, the perfect born son of it. He eats dinner with Alex and holds his hand as he walks him home.

Alex sees him the next day, in the shop, and they are silent, but their mouths curve up into knowing smiles, fond and brilliant, and Alex slips him another paper when paying for a book on black magic that he does not intend to use.

Aaron meets him at the bus stop on the corner that night, twelve feet from the narrow door of the shop, and they are silent when they kiss, but their kisses are secrets and when they are traded they are louder than thunder.

Aaron calls him Alexander.

~

John doesn’t say a word when Alex asks him about the shop, moony-eyed and naïve.

John sips his coffee and types something on his laptop, turning it for Alex to see.

John warns him against the shop, telling him it’s dangerous.

John never opens his mouth, never voices these warnings to Alex.

John watches him walk out, knowing that the words meant nothing.

~

Aaron lives above the store, in a little flat with bookshelves filled with personal books.

Some look like journals, some look like children’s fairy tales.

Alex isn’t looking at the books when Aaron leads him up the rickety, steep stairs and captures his mouth in a scorching kiss.

His lips form Aaron’s name but he never lets the word escape his lips. He feels Aaron’s fiery kisses on his neck and shoulders and his gasps but doesn’t speak. He cannot.

The book's cast an aura over them both, like they’re reaching out to them both, and taking something from them. Alex doesn’t know what it is. Alex only knows that he doesn’t care if they take his life force. He’d be happy to die in Aaron’s arms right then and there.

He does not.

~

(“I’ve never felt like this before,” he tells Aaron, after, when they’re done, and they’re standing outside at the bus stop, twelve feet from the narrow door of the shop.

“Really.” It’s not a question, and he can feel Aaron’s lips curving into a smile against his cheek.

“It’s like magic,” he says and Aaron laughs, hands on Alex’s hips.

“Well, there is a reason for that.”)

~

In the end, Alex doesn’t find out until it’s too late.

He arrives at the shop, and the narrow-door is kicked in. The lights are off and there are ripped pages on the floor, but there are no books on the shelves. The shop is bare.

Alex already knows what it means. But the desperation coursing through his veins forces him further into the shop.

Up the rickety, steep stairs he climbs, the handrail soaked with something dark and sticky, and the door to Aaron’s flat is cracked and hanging off it’s hinges and the flat is bare.

Alex runs home, with tears in his eyes, but no words to say.

~

It’s on the news.

The shop was found, and perpetrators arrested.

Alex feels numb.

John doesn’t say a word, but taps him on the shoulder and nods to the fireplace.

Alex nods.

~

He watches the books burn.

His insides don’t feel any warmer.

If anything, he feels like he’s frozen his heart and he’s watching it fall to the ground, incapable of catching it.

~

Eliza holds his hands across the table, looking as tired as he feels.

She still smiles and tells him stories about she and her witch-sister’s adventures, but they feel hollow now.

She clutches his hands tighter and doesn’t let go until they say their final goodbyes.

~

He marries her, but it doesn’t feel like it did with Aaron.

Eliza is a candle compared to Aaron’s raging bonfire, but who is he to compare his wife to anybody?

So he doesn’t.

He smiles, and listens to her stories and kisses her goodnight and doesn’t think about the books or the narrow door or the rickety, steep stairs.

He doesn’t dream of purple eyes, and he certainly does not dream of scorching kisses.

~

It doesn’t matter if his son has purple eyes.

It doesn’t matter if he can make plants grow at will, or make his baby sister cups of warm milk with rosemary in them that make her smile and giggle.

It doesn’t matter if Eliza and her sisters make potions in the attic.

It doesn’t matter if he meets Aaron again in the supermarket, but this time his voice is loud, and there’s a ring on his finger, and a picture of a little girl with purple eyes in his wallet, or that his eyes are grey.

It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t remember Alex or the books or their scorching kisses.

It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t remember the bus stop twelve feet from the narrow door to the shop, or the rickety steep stairs, or the slips of paper.

It doesn’t matter if John sometimes meets him for coffee and talks about meaningless nothings, but has a sharp look in his eyes that says _it’s all my fault._

It doesn’t matter that Alex opens the little dusty, leather-bound volume before bed every night, and reads Aaron’s sentences over and over again and wonders how the man could let everything happen and not warn him.

It doesn’t matter that Aaron used to be a seer and that he wrote down every prophecy he ever had, to give to _the boy with the hurricane eyes._

~

Alex dies, never having said a word of this to anyone.

It’s peaceful, in his sleep, when he’s beyond being young anymore.

In the end it’s Philip who finds the book, while they’re sorting through his things three weeks after the funeral.

Eliza has a hard time going up stairs anymore, and asks Philip over to go through his father’s study.

He finds it under a loose floorboard near the window.

The first page is dedicated to _the boy with the hurricane eyes_ , and the rest of the book is nonsense prophecies that seem to already have happened.

But Philip takes the book home.

And he watches a slip of paper fall from between two pages and he reads the address.

Philip puts on a coat and catches a train downtown.

~

Philip finds a shop, obviously glamoured,  with a narrow door, across the street from a train station, with a bus stop on the corner, maybe twelve feet from the door, and walks in.

The girl behind the counter has purple eyes and smiles as if she recognises him when he walks towards her, cautiously. He can't shake the feeling that he maybe recognises her.

He puts the book on the counter and her smile grows. She hands him a slip of paper, wordlessly, and he reads it, heart thumping in his chest.

_And so we begin again, Hurricane Eyes._

 

 

****Fin.** **

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this. My Tumblr is @nose-coffee. Please comment and kudos.


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